Marginalia #1: Thoughts scribbled in the margins of my Bible

by Shafer Parker

Matthew 1:5 Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab, Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth.

What I scribbled in the margin of my Bible: “If your mother is a Canaanite prostitute, it’s likely that you will have fewer scruples re your wife’s Moabite background.”

Many commentators have noted that all four of the women mentioned in Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus have a moral stain on their lives. Tamar (v.3) pretended to be a prostitute in order to entice her father-in-law Judah to have sex with her. Rahab was the prostitute (harlot) who hid the Israelite spies in her house of ill repute. Ruth was a Moabitess, and although the Bible makes no suggestion that she was anything but pure, just being from Moab was a moral stain in the eyes of Jacob’s descendants. They were, after all, children of incest (Gen. 19:30-38). The last mentioned is Bathsheba, wife of Uriah and an adulteress who left no record that she ever once considered resisting David’s advances.

But what interests me just now is Boaz’s willingness to marry Ruth, the Moabitess. Whatever could have prompted him to marry so far beneath his station? Well, consider his mother, the aforementioned Rahab, she whose first career was carved out in what is sometimes called the world’s oldest profession. But that was not the Rahab Boaz knew. His mother had become a believer in the God of Israel. Her life had been transformed by God’s grace, and the mother he knew was a woman of character and an example of faith for all the world.

Maybe Boaz could get past Ruth’s heritage because he knew very well what God had done in his mother’s life. Maybe all of us could get past a lot of things in other people if we could just keep in mind how much God has forgiven in us.